Teaching Key Academic Vocabulary to High School ELLs

Narrator: Funding for
Common Core State Standards and ELLs

is provided by the American Teacher's
Innovation Fund.

[upbeat acoustic guitar]

Anne Formato: Okay. Alright,
so there's five words

that we're looking at today, guys.

The first we're looking at is prisoner.

Each day that my students enter the classroom,

they have, um, you know, three
to five vocabulary words on the board.

Next one, this ones a hard one too, courtesy.

Okay? You got it? Courtesy.

[students mumbling]

Formato: Let's try that one again! Courtesy.

Male student: [laughing] Courtesy!

Formato: You got it! Okay!

If I do something nice for someone else,
so if someone's walking in that door,

and I open the door, right?

And I say "Oh! Go first." Right?
I'm giving them the courtesy.

I'm allowing them to go first.
So I'm doing something nice for them.

Narrator: Anne Formato keeps her ELLs
first exposure to new vocabulary relatively brief.

She will have the students continue to work
with these new words in a meaningful way.

So that they can be more easily assimilated
into the students vocabulary.

Formato: I don't just want them
to have exposure to the words,

I actually want for them to use the words.

In part, because I want some sort of
ownership with that.

I found that at the beginning of this year
and at the beginning of last year,

when I was exposing them to vocabulary
it was very easy for them to have this recoil

with the word, but then not be able to
produce a sentence using that word.

A lot of it comes from this fear
of sounding uneducated

and this fear sounding like
they didn't know what they were doing

or they couldn't speak English
or that they weren't intelligent.

But my students have a tendency
to go back to what they're comfortable with.

So instead of using that tier two vocabulary
or the academic vocabulary,

they really were falling back
to the tier one words or s-talking around.

[whispering] So an occasion is an event
that's something that's like important to you.

And Angie already put it in there,
she used the word "important event"

which isn't here, but it's implied.

Because it's not just saying,

"Oh I went to a party-- I went to a movie--
I went to whatever--"

"I went to a wedding--
I went to like a sweet sixteen--

I went to a quinceañera."

So it's right there,
and I like that. Perfect!

Okay, ocasion, same thing.

So cognate, you got it.

That was really good!
That was the best one I've seen all day.

By having them write sentences and by
having them write short answers using those words,

I know that they know the word
and that they know how to use it

and they know what it means, and then
having them feel more comfortable with it.

So it's a comfort thing
and a knowledge thing, too.

Narrator: Ms. Formato chose today's five words
based on what the students are about to read.

A letter from John Smith,
about Pocahontas and her family.

This key vocabulary
will help the students understand the text.

It also gives them more opportunities
to interact with the new words.

Formato: Okay, yesterday,
John Smith was saying that he had three loves.

Right? Does anybody remember what they were?

Male Student 2: Oh, I know.
My God, my country, and my... my queen.

Formato: You got it. My God,
my country, and my king.

And he put them in order, right?

Male Student 2: Yes.

Formato: Because he didn't believe that
his king was above who? Who is the top for him?

Students: God.

Formato: God. God was number one, okay?
And the last one was who?

Students: Country.

Formato: Country. Okay, so he started off,
he talked to the queen.

Today we're gonna read the second paragraph.
Okay? So if you already started that.

I'm gonna read this out loud to you and then
we're gonna do a little bit of work on it.

He said, he started off,
we already read the first paragraph.

In the second one he says,

"So it is that some ten years ago,
being in Virginia--"

Okay, so he's writing this letter
and he's looking back ten years.

So now he's in 1616, he's talking about 1606
when he met Pocahotas, okay?

"And taken prisoner, by the power of Powhatan,
their chief king. I received, I got--"

Okay so he's probably talking about
what he got from King Powhatan.

"I got, from this great savage,
exceeding great courtesy."

Okay? So he got--does he sound like he's mad?

He got exceeding great courtesy.

Male Student 1: No.

Formato: What does this mean,
exceeding courtesy?

Kevin, what's?

Kevin: It is when somebody's good with you.

Formato: Yeah. Yeah! Like very good,
nice treatment, right?

And we're gonna be-- we can always flip back
onto the front, courtesy is like a nice gesture.

So you get a lot of nice gestures from him.

What I was doing was eliciting this,
the vocabulary that was used within the text.

So, I was constantly asking them
to use aca-- you know,

t-tier two and tier three level words,
academic vocabulary.

So that their learning
was constantly reinforced.

And, um, as we all know,
through repeated exposure,

that's really-- and practicing--
that's really how that,

that vocabulary gets from the page,
into the memory.